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RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

I have a machine with a Gigabyte x58A-UD3R motherboard. It has 2 RAID 0 arrays on the ICH10R: the Windows 7 OS is on a 2 SSD array (I reasoned that the SSDs would be reliable enough to do this safely, and I keep it well backed up) and I also stored DVDs on another array of Samsung HD204UIs bought way back when they were cheap. (Yeah, I knew this isn't fault-tolerant, and that one is advised against RAID arrays on "green" drives, but it did work fine for a year. I used it as backup for my DVDs, a system that made them much easier to play, and I kept the array backed up. Well, not very well backed up, actually, but I knew I could always restore from the DVDs if needed.)

Yesterday one of the drives in the HDD array started to make a sound like constant head parking or something similar. My guess was/is that one of the drives had gone bad, and that I'd probably lost the array. And when I restarted, I saw, during Post, that the HDD array had failed. But the SSD OS array was OK, and I figured Windows would load OK. But it didn't, even in safe mode, and when I tried to repair, using the Windows disk, everything just stopped when loading the Windows files. This surprised me.

It seems to me like my next move is to delete the HDD array, since both arrays are controlled by the ICH10R controller, and see if I can load Windows then. But if the problems are because something is wrong with the controller, it seems like replacing the motherboard with something newer is a better option. Anyway, does anyone have any suggestion about things to try before giving up on the hope that the drive isn't trashed?

Re: RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

What may had happened is if both arrays were present, the boot partition may had been on the second array (platter drives) I've see this happen before. usually to fix that, use the windows installation DVD to repair the installation with just the SSD array present. That should fix it.

Don't touch the SSD array, leave it as-is and try repairing windows.

to better protect yourself with platter drives if you need all that space (I'm assuming you needed a 4TB partition), I'd get another 2 drives and set them up for RAID10, your board supports it, that would populate all 6 blue ports and guarantee's full fault tolerance. issue with green/blue/red drives is their built in power saver inhibits the drives rom spooling up quickly (together) and then the raid controller will think there is an issue with the drives. you being in RAID0 minimizes this, you would see issues in a RAID1 especially in a RAID5.

Re: RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

Vin,

Thanks for your reply. I can't use the Windows installation disk at all--machine just stops dead while loading the files it needs. Which seems weird to me, because I wouldn't think that at that point the disk drives would be involved at all. Has me thinking about the power supply and such, because in the past I've had more problems with power supplies going bad than anything else.

Also, I had one extra HD204UI, but that's it. Well, I do have some of the continuation model drives (from after Seagate bought Samsung's drives)--they have a new model number, plus HD204UI in smaller type. So I'm not sure whether the two kinds of drives are the same or not, i.e., whether they'd play well together in RAID.

BTW, the boot drive is on a third SSD, another controller. Windows just grabbed that on its own when I installed it.

Re: RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

That makes me think that windows still loaded something on your array, when the installation stops loading, when during the installation does it do this? what driver is it trying to load?

as for different drives types in an array, it's OK as long as the drive share the same properties (RPM, Latency, Seek Time) size doesn't matter much because when you create the array the controller with match the size to the smallest drive. so if you have (1)-1TB and (1)-640GB your array will only use 640GB from the 1TB (and the remainder is wasted, you can't ever use it)

Re: RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

I really don't know about your problem with all this raid crap going on, but I would suggest you disable all drives except the one/s where your os is installed and repair or resintall and go from there.

Re: RAID 0 failure with Gigabyte x58A-UD3R

That makes me think that windows still loaded something on your array, when the installation stops loading, when during the installation does it do this? what driver is it trying to load?
Vin

Vin,

Okay, so, several days ago, every time I tried starting from the Windows disk I got a long string of "loading" messages. Today I tried again, like you said. No messages this time, went right to "Starting Windows." Only difference is the rest I gave the thing. That's as far as it gets, though.

Guess I'm going to do what the other guy said. Made me laugh, because that's just what I would have said if it were someone else's machine. I was just in denial, I think.